News
NY Comic Con/Anime Fest to Premiere Star Driver
posted on by Christopher Macdonald
Aniplex America has announced that New York Comic Con / Anime Festival will host the American premiere of Bones' Star Driver Kagayaki no Takuto television anime series. The "school robot action" story is set on a verdant island called Southern Cross, where a boy named Takuto Tsunashi arrives one night by swimming ashore. He enrolls in the island's high school academy, which conceals a secret — a giant humanoid figure underground. Takuya Igarashi (Soul Eater, Ouran High School Host Club) is directing the series, whcih will premiere in Japan in October.
Aniplex also released a press release confirming a previous announcement that creator Tow Ubukata will personally present the world premiere of the first Mardock Scramble film at New York Comic Con on October 8. Mardock Scramble: The First Compression, the first of three films based on Ubukata's science fiction novel series, will not open in Japan until November 6.
The North American book distributor Simon & Schuster is already listing a Mardock Scramble book by Ubukata for a January 2011 release by Viz Media. Simon & Schuster describes the plot of the book as the following:
Why me? It was to be the last thought a young prostitute, Balot, would ever have…as a human anyway. Taken in by a devious gambler named Shell, she became a slave to his cruel desires and would have been killed by his hand if not for a private investigator and his self-aware Universal Tool, Oefcoque. Now a cyborg, Balot has not only physical powers, but the ability to disrupt social environments. She chases after Shell, his partner-in-crime Boiled, and faces down a variety of insane villains in this pulse-pounding cyberpunk noir adventure.
Megumi Hayashibara will play the main character Rune Balot, and Susumu Kudo is directing the films at the GoHands anime studio with character designer Shingo Suzuki. The project was originally planned in 2005 as an original video anime series with the Gonzo anime studio, director Yasufumi Soejima, and character designer Range Murata, but that earlier version was cancelled in 2006 "for various reasons."
Ubukata won the Nihon SF Taisho Award from his fellow writers in 2003 for his original Mardock Scramble novel series. Besides Mardock Scramble, Ubukata created the stories behind the Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor, Le Chevalier D'Eon, Heroic Age, and Pilgrim Jäger anime and manga projects.
Image © Bones/Star Driver Production Committee Image © Mardock Scramble Production Committee
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